I once had a friend named David whose main goal in life was to achieve high academic standards. Like most students, the motive for this goal was not to learn, but to become accepted into a prestigious institution. In David's case, this prestigious institution was UCLA. It is interesting how David's school of choice was UCLA. The University of California of Los Angeles itself is a very prestigious school, and for a person to declare intent to attend UCLA is like declaring arrogance.
According to most students who knew David, the dominant characteristic in him was his arrogance. Although he probably had the intelligence and academics to support his vaunting to a certain degree, it was still quite annoying to hear him subliminally putting down others. One such event that displayed David's airs was the time Mrs. Rose posted up the scores for the February trigonometry midterm. A small group, including David and me, began to huddle around the posted scores.
"Oh my God, I hope she curves this," Clara whispered to me, seemingly hypnotized by her low score.
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2.
"She should. Only two people have higher than a B," I said as I skimmed up and down the list. There were only two students that actually did well on the exam, a 91% and a 98%. Faint whispers, sounding like soft winds blowing dead leaves, could be heard all around me. Most of the people were upset with their score.
"Awe F*CK! So close to a perfect score!" David cried. He wasn't talking to anyone in particular, it seemed that he just wanted to make sure everyone knew he was the one with the 98%.
"If I just got F*CKen number thirty six right. I knew it was B!" he moaned as he slapped his answer sheet like it was someone's face. Everyone was too busy recovering from the disappointing grade drop to give him any attention.
"Maybe if you would have spent a little more time checking your work ," I said because everyone seemed to be ignoring him. After all, he did turn in the exam about ten minutes before everyone else started to finish up.